750 98% (Q51/V40) & 5.5 - How I did it - The Beat The GMAT Forum - Expert GMAT Help & MBA Admissions Advice

This is just a chronicle of my test preparation and test experience. It probably won't be too useful but I figured I'd post it here in hopes that it may help at least one person.

I bought OG11 earlier this year around March. This was the first step I took to starting my studying. I read through the book once and did the quantitative and CR sections in about 4-5 months, until July. I had work and many other things that always took priority over studying during this period. I realized this in late July and felt the only way I would really study would be to pick a date for my test. I decided that a date sooner than later would truly get me studying.

On 8/1 I decided to schedule my GMAT for 8/27 @ 10:30AM. I decided this for 2 main reasons. First, I needed it to be an upcoming date to really get me going and second, it was one of the few days left in August that had a slot other than 8AM. My first piece of advice is obvious: book early. Might as well take the test on your terms rather than with what's left over.

This gave me 2 weekends (I didn't do anything 8/2-8/3) and about 3 work weeks to study. I quickly decided that I would take 4 full length CATs, each on a day of the 2 weekends. I then studied during the work week for about 1-2 hours per day for the first 2 weeks and then for 2-3 hours per day in the last week.

I've always been strong with math/quantitative anything. I don't read many books, so that can't help with my verbal skills. To put it in perspective, I've read 3 books for fun in the last 5 years. Given these points I decided that about 99% of my time would be spent going over verbal concepts/strategies while I just brush up on a few quantitative concepts. You'll notice my study regimen is very verbal biased as a result.

These are the materials I used:

OG11
A must. Real questions can't be beat.

OG11 Verbal
Additional verbal review since my weakness is verbal. More real questions can't be a bad thing.

Bold Face CR resources (https://www.beatthegmat.com/boldface-questions-t61.html & https://www.urch.com/forums/gmat-critica ... ce-cr.html)
Went over these just so I didn't panick. Obviously not a major portion of the test but if you get one of these early it's very important to get it right.

GMAT idiom list
Found a list online somewhere and copied it to a word document. Important, especially some of the common ones, as these are an easy way to eliminate incorrect answers.

Spidey's Sentence Correction Notes
Lots of good tips and tricks. Useful tendencies and things to watch out for.

Sahil's Grammar Notes
Same as Spidey's

GMAT Flash Cards
Great tool! Lots of great information collected from various sources. This is the main math review I did.

Permutations & Combinations
One thing I wanted to freshen up on. Somehow got linked to this pdf download that did a good job of summing everything up. (https://www.esnips.com/nsdoc/f97cae11-95 ... on=forceDL)

AWA Topic Pools
I downloaded the pools and just looked over a few random topics. I thought about what I would write just so I could get in to the mindset that I would need on test day. ~150 topics in each pool.

My random advice:

Everything I say, just like anything else you read in a book or online, should be taken with a grain of salt.

Using all of these guides with tips and tricks is a good way to improve your test scores but don't take them too literally. I found myself missing a few SC questions on practice tests because I would think "____ is usually wrong, so I'll lean towards the other answers" even when I may have normally picked that answer. I think being a native english speaker is helpful on many questions. A lot of the time, the incorrect answers just sound wrong. If I really try to analyze them I can see what's wrong but just knowing they sound wrong was often enough for me given a better answer.

If you feel strong about your quantitative skills, don't feel bad about getting to a question that you think is hard. That's a good sign, not a bad one! That means you're probably at the upper echelon of questions and are on your way to a high Q score. This definitely happened during my test and I guessed on one question. It was a DS questions and I had narrowed it down to either C (both together sufficient) or E (both together not sufficient) and at that point I had probably spent 5 minutes on the questions. This was way more than usual, so I just guessed and moved on. The funny thing is now I can't even remember what the question was about! I just remember the last part about guessing.

I think this is another key thing to remember. It doesn't matter if you think you got an earlier question wrong. All that matters is the question you are on and how you are doing with time.

For PS I almost always solve backwards once I find an answer and also may try the other answer choices just in case. I usually could answer quesitons fast enough to have time to do this. If you can't answer most questions quickly, then don't do this. I also solved DS problems all the way through just to make sure there are no tricks as outlined here (found this after my test!): https://www.beatthegmat.com/some-helpful ... e-t29.html I feel for these tricks in a couple of my practice tests, so to avoid them I just started working all the way through.

I had more DS questions than I remember getting in practice. I think many of the "harder" Q questions are DS.

As others have said, try to look at RC as a learning experience. It helped for me to basically pretend like I was interested in learning about whatever was being told in the passage.

Test Prep:

8/16
Powerprep 1 @ noon
T740 (Q49 V41) finished Q with 12 minutes remaining and V with 15 minutes remaining

8/17
GMATPrep 1 @ 1PM
T740 (Q50 V40) Q 10 minutes remaining and V 18 minutes remaining

8/23
Powerprep 2 @ 10:30AM (test time)
T760 (Q51 V41) Q 6 minutes remaining (got interrupted part way through) and V 14 minutes remaining

8/24
GMATPrep 2 @ 10:30AM (test time)
T730 (Q50 V39) Q 5 minutes remaining and V 10 minutes remaining

8/26
I took a vacation day from work to help me relax and do some last minute looking over of notes. I didn't do any practice questions.

I woke up around 8AM, when I planned to wake up on test day. I got ready and did the same morning routine that I would on test day. I drove to the test center at ~10AM as I planned to on test day. I got to the test center and went inside and talked to the lady at the front. She was VERY nice. I told her I was taking the GMAT the next day and she explained everything I could have wanted her to. She told me where the bathrooms were, showed me the lockers, told me I couldn't bring anything in to the test room, what ID I'd need, etc. More information than I needed to know but hearing it again can't hurt.

I came home and basically watched a lot of TV. Day time TV is terrible! While watching TV I went through my notes as well as the 2 SC guides and GMAT flash cards. I worked out around the time I usually would and then had a relatively large meal. I went to sleep earlier than usual at around 10PM.

8/27 - Test day
I woke up at around 7:45AM. This is a bit earlier than I usually wake up. I woke up about 4 times before my alarm because I was so antsy/nervous. I got up and did my usual prework routine. Brush, shower, get dressed etc.

I had a protein shake (normal morning routine), a few of these peanut bars that I'm addicted to, and some water. It's key to get some sort of nourishment in you before your test. I checked email and browsed the internet for about 30 minutes while drinking/eating.

After this I fired up GMATPrep 1 and redid the verbal section. The only way I know how to do this is to skip the two essays and then just answer A for all of the quantitative to get to the verbal. I did about 22 questions before I decided it was time to head to the test center. This was my warm up.

I left my place at ~9:45AM for my 10:30AM appointment. I got there very early but they let me start upon arrival. I used the bathroom and had a drink of water one last time before the AWAs. They offered me ear plugs and huge ear muff things if I wanted them but I didn't use either. I didn't practice with them and didn't want them to throw me off.

My AWAs weren't that bad. I felt much better about my AOA than my AOI, but overall nothing too big. I didn't practice much for these and wasn't too worried afterwards. I tried not to get worked up about these because I knew I had a while to go until the verbal section.

I took my break after the AWAs. I went to the bathroom, ate another peanut bar, drank some water and did some stretching. I'm sure if anyone saw me doing my stretching they would have laughed, but at that point I didn't care.

I returned for my quantitative section after about 5 minutes. This section went pretty much as planned. I took my time with the first few questions. After a few more I could tell they were getting slightly harder. The one question that I guessed on was somewhere in the 20s. It was funny to see a random easy one thrown in with some of the hard ones. I'm thinking those random ones were the "test" questions but who knows. I finished the section with about 4 minutes remaining. This was much less than usual, but I took my time on many problems that I wouldn't have in practice.

I took my final break and basically repeated what I had done in the first break.

I went through the verbal section slowly as well. I guessed on a couple of SC questions after narrowing down the answers because I felt like I was taking too much time. My RC passages were mostly average except for one that I really didn't like (long and 4 questions). At this point I was feeling a bit mentally fatigued. Even though I had practiced, the real thing just felt harder and sucked my energy. I definitely felt like I could have done better on the verbal section but at that point I was just happy to be done.

I probably missed some things. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

750 98% (Q51/V40) & 5.5 - How I did it

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